Broussard: Decision on pump operators wasn't his

From the first questions in September 2005 about Jefferson Parish's missing pump operators, Parish President Aaron Broussard stepped up as the chief defender of their Hurricane Katrina evacuation.

Sending them more than 100 miles from their stations might have saved their lives, he said, laying the foundation of his argument. He reasoned that the caravan of the drainage workers and 1,500 other employees to Washington Parish also ensured a backup government could return from a worst-case hurricane to resume operations.

Residents' curiosity about the plan quickly turned to a clamor for details, however, as it became apparent that the pump operators' absence led to much of the post-storm flooding in East Jefferson.

Broussard dug in.

"If that anger is focused on me, well, the buck stops here," he said in October 2005.

More than two years later, Broussard's definitive statements and declarations of accountability have been replaced with uncertain answers and denials of responsibility. The new version that emerges from his recent deposition in a potential class-action lawsuit against him personally and in his capacity as parish president portrays Broussard as a trusting delegator clueless of storm preparations, not the detail-demanding leader barking commands.

The about-face has reignited rage in some homeowners who accuse him of exacerbating a natural disaster and then dodging the blame, a wound likely reopened further by Broussard's acknowledgment of the contradiction.

"I always defended the plan," he said Wednesday in his first public statements about the deposition. "I think in defense of the plan, there was always an interpretation by the public that it was in fact my plan or an individual decision that I made. .¤.¤.

"There were a lot of inferences that were made there, and I accepted those inferences and I did not challenge those inferences. I took full responsibility for the actions that the parish as a whole took."

If the public assumed an incorrect version of events, a review of Broussard's recorded comments in the first months of recovery shows that he at the very least cultivated what he now calls a wrong impression.

Responsibility claimed

In some of his earliest statements about the abandoned pump stations, Broussard batted down questions probing whether operators' absence worsened flooding.

He explained the Washington Parish retreat as a deliberate move on his part that might have saved their lives, while it also guaranteed the parish had an alternate staff ready to return to duty if a hurricane obliterated whatever contingent stayed behind.

"A government deliberately placed in exile can come back," he said in early September 2005.

Statements from within Broussard's administration bolstered the image of him as the tuned-in leader calling the shots.

"The parish president made the decision that he wouldn't risk the lives of the pump station operators, and we evacuated those people to the shelter closet to us," Walter Maestri, Jefferson's high-profile emergency director who has since resigned, said in early September 2005. "You want to know who's responsible for the flooding? Katrina's responsible."

The refrain that safety dictated Broussard's decision continued for months.

"You could easily be sentencing someone to death by staying at their post," Broussard said in October 2005. "That is illogical, unreasonable, and we will never do that."

Knowledge of plan denied

The line of defense also acknowledged an awareness of the Doomsday Plan, a terse, undated policy that calls for all essential employees, save a handful of department directors, to evacuate to Mount Hermon High School in Washington Parish.

"I did not create this plan, but this plan has logic," Broussard said in the same October 2005 interview.

Fast-forward two years to Broussard's Nov. 28 deposition, and any knowledge of the plan or justification for implementing it disappears.

"Are you telling us today that you had no knowledge that the pump operators were going to be evacuated until after the fact?" plaintiff's attorney Darleen Jacobs asked him.

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

Again and again, Broussard answers that he didn't know the 1998 plan existed and didn't know the operators were ordered to evacuate and by whom.

"Your question says that I knew the Doomsday Plan was going to be implemented," he said. "I've already testified that I did not know this plan existed calling for the evacuation of the pump operators."

'Perception' acknowledged

Inextricable from his early defense of the evacuation was the image Broussard tried to exude as a leader taking part in every major decision.

"I am not an analysis paralysis guy. I'm an action guy," he said in the October 2005 interview. "If you manage a crisis by committee, you are hopelessly inept in reacting to the needs of the citizens. I was willing to take the bull by the horns."

Two months later, he used the famous Harry Truman saying to reiterate his authority.

"Any time you go through a tragedy of this type where people have suffered loss, there is a process there," he said on Dec. 27, 2005. "It begins with sadness, and then it gravitates to anger. Anger is the part of the process where most people are right now. And if that anger is focused on me, well, the buck stops here. In Jefferson Parish, it stops with the parish president."

But Broussard wasn't willing to use the same phrase under oath. He acknowledged to a plaintiff's attorney only that the public perceived him as the parish's ultimate authority.

"Would you say that the buck stops with you as parish president, generally, in decision-making?" Jacobs asked Nov. 28.

"I think from an accountability standpoint in the public eye, that's certainly a perception," he said.

A distinction is made

Broussard disowned still another of his own metaphors between the public version and the legal one.

"It doesn't matter to me what mistakes were made by whom," he said in April 2007 during his re-election campaign. "That is the responsibility of leadership. I'm the captain of the ship. My ship goes down, I go down with the ship."

Seven months and a successful election later, Broussard distances himself from the naval analogy.

"As parish president, as head of the ship, as we say in admiralty and maritime law, did you make any attempt to meet with your directors or emergency management chiefs or personnel to determine what plan they had for the parish with regard to the evacuation of essential personnel, such as pump operators, prior to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina?" Jacobs asked.

"No ma'am," Broussard said.

"Is there any particular reason why you did not, because you were parish president," she asked.

"Again, the emergency plans are written in advance of emergencies, and these plans are implemented according to their own benchmarks and their guidelines," he answered. "I trusted the people that were in place."

Acknowledging the opposing statements, Broussard made a distinction between the way he characterized events publicly, the terse answers he gave in his first deposition and the much more layered truth that has yet to emerge.

"There's a lot more to be told that is going to have to be told in the litigation process," he said. "So it's understandable as people see bits and pieces of things, that that may lead to some confusion. But I think when all the facts are revealed as they will be, then I think there will be a more complete picture of exactly what happened and when it happened."

Meghan Gordon can be reached at mgordon@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3785.